I am just about complete with the dresser game asset. I created the drawer face and handle, found some textures and set about trying to figure out how to add everything together (parent or join). Quickly creating a new version of the blend file to test, test and retest I eventually came up with a process that seems to work. I joined the face and handle to the interior box of the drawer creating one object, UV unwrapped the entire drawer using smart UV project and working with the settings came up with a workable unwrap. I then created three different materials/textures, one each for the face, interior box and handle then selecting the appropriate polys, assigned the correct material. I’m not really sure if I should have done this with vertex groups or not, I am just relaying here (for later recall) what worked.

Now to bake the textures. I tried baking each texture individually which worked however I could not get all the materials into one image texture unless of course I saved each separately brought them into Photoshop as individual layers and merged them together. I then had an epiphany, in all the tutorials, which have been short and quick showing how to bake textures in Blender using cycles they only baked one material at any one time. I then decided to try to add the image texture node used for baking to each of the materials for the drawer, referencing the same UV map in each. I selected the drawer and then bake. After a couple minutes wait (I had the samples set a little high) I had the results I was looking for. All three textures, drawer interior box, face and handle baked onto the same image.

The image below is s screen shot of my finished bake, following that is the ‘close to complete’ dresser. I have to duplicate and place the drawers which are currently diffuse textured place holders. I will then call this one complete for testing purposes anyway. I will also try instancing the drawers rather than duplicate to see how that will work in Unity as well.

I have been back on the computer working in Blender, started adding textures to my game assets when I realized how long it has been since I used the Blender Internal render engine. I am not sure if using BI is the correct or only direction when creating and texturing assets for a game, I am going to be using Unity3D and Unreal Engine 4 for the game engines. I am actively searching for materials regardless of the media (Books, articles or videos) on the subject of creating assets for a game engine. I am sure they are out there but I have found the topic of creating assets difficult to find. Most of the information I have located concentrate on the programming aspect and don’t pick up on the modeling aspect. Actually I am comfortable with the modeling just not the baking/texturing when it comes to game assets.

I ran across a tutorial set in work a few weeks back which creates a horror game from start to finish. He uses 3ds Max for the modeling where I use Blender but as with most software I am familiar with, if you know the concepts you can use whatever tool you are familiar with. This course is very detailed with the last part produced at two hours and there is no telling how long it actually took to create not to mention edit.

I also found some items on CG Cookie/Unity that might be of some help as well as a book titled “Game Development with blender”. I am not interested in using Blender for the game engine however any modeling mentioned should be relevant for my purposes.

I can’t believe it, Blender crashed on me. I was working on a simple asset for Unity and Unreal 4, very simple, a set of drawers, boxy without much detail, actually no detail and poof, semi white screen then Blender stopped working. I have not had Blender crash in over a year and I was not using a build bot version. I must have hit some combination of buttons in error.

No, I did not save first but like I said it was very simple and did not take much time at all to recreate what was lost.

Started back in blender working with constraints watching Chris Kuhn via CG Cookie and having his book “Death to Armatures” it is great to see other objects working like this and gives me quite a few ideas for some of the projects I am currently working on.

I have been having trouble with the site lately. When I have tried to sign in and create a new post everything I type is blank, as if the font color was set to white. The cursor moves as if I am typing and when I select ‘Preview’ the post shows up as written but what the heck, I can’t see while I am typing. Ok, I’m not all that bad in the typing arena (70+ wpm with very minimal errors) but I want to see. I hope I have that fixed and will start posting more often than I have been.

Purchased a new phone this weekend, a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. After diligently searching for any and all reviews both written and Youtube, and finding just about zero negative ones I decided to go with that phone. Wouldn’t you know, right off the bat, when bringing it to work for the first time I leave it there. Bone head! Jeff was there to hide it away in a file cabinet till I get back to be safe.

Back to being constrained by Blender!

Today (7/2/2014) is supposed to be the day of the big announcement. That announcement is the sale of SpiritAerosystems to whomever is purchasing this company, specifically in Tulsa, OK. Do I think we will have any announcement today? No I do not and the reason for this is we, our team has been working on the transition of our legacy systems to the SAP product for the last two years and are just about complete during which time we have heard more times than I can remember about an announcement to be made on ‘x’ date and it has never happened.

I personally am hoping it does not happen again.

Edit: No announcement today 🙂